Climate Roadblocks: Looming Trade Deals Threaten Efforts to Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground
If passed by Congress, two pending U.S. trade deals – the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – would give some of the world’s largest fossil fuel corporations broad new rights to challenge our climate protections in private tribunals. For the first time, these corporations could ask three unaccountable lawyers to order U.S. government compensation for policies that affect their U.S. investments in fracking, offshore drilling, oil and gas leasing on public lands, and fossil fuel pipelines. This map, which shows some of these investments, accompanies a new Sierra Club report that reveals the breadth of this new threat to our climate protections.
Click on a fossil fuel investment for more information on the corporations that could use these trade deals to try to prevent, or gain compensation for, U.S. efforts to keep fossil fuels in the ground. For a full explanation of this new climate threat, click here for Sierra Club's new report.
**This map does not include fossil fuel investments beyond fracking, offshore drilling, oil and gas leasing on public lands, and fossil fuel pipelines. Many additional fossil fuel investments, not to mention non-fossil fuel investments, are owned by corporations that could challenge U.S. policies in private tribunals under the TPP or TTIP.**
While this map strives to be comprehensive, data availability limitations mean that there are likely additional corporations with investments of the four types profiled here that would be empowered to challenge U.S. policies in private tribunals under the TPP or TTIP. Data on offshore drilling leases and onshore federal oil and gas leases are from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the Bureau of Land Management, respectively, compiled by the Rainforest Action Network. Pipeline data have been compiled from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and other governmental and industry sources. Fracking data have been compiled from various industry sources. Full sourcing information is available in the accompanying report here.
